


the taste of salt

by Gildedstorm



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, can you believe no one has written about lavinia yet???, in which lavinia's luck remains terribly consistent, mildly terrifying discussions over tea, vex simulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:27:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28293801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gildedstorm/pseuds/Gildedstorm
Summary: The witch offers Lavinia what she wants most. Just like in the oldest stories, it comes with a high price to pay.
Relationships: Lavinia Garcia Umr Tawil & Savathun
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	the taste of salt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SignificanttOtter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SignificanttOtter/gifts).



> a gift fic for synnth!! this idea set its teeth in me quite quickly, and proved to be ambitious enough that I could easily have stretched it far beyond the wordcount. I did love being able to call back to some of my favourite overlooked lore fragments!

Lavinia is in a cage. She worked that part out very quickly. But it is a cage made like a dream, and it works like a dream, and that makes it difficult to resent. Either the witch is not there, or she is, and might well have always been. Lavinia has tried thinking of her in other terms, even by the few names she can dredge up from pre-Golden Age myths, but they slide off as if oiled. The witch refuses all other titles.

Today – if there are days here, as the only way she can tell time is by the witch’s visits – the tea the witch pours for them both is a dark, smoky blend that she remembers from her time as a student, poring over every new secret and mystery in the archives.

It is also a blend that no longer exists; the plants, the supply chain that brought it to the city, the process and the knowledge behind it all lost, excised by a raid by one species or another. One infinitesimal loss out of trillions. Yet here it is, rewound, warming her hands. The flavour makes her eyes sting, and when she is done blinking the feeling away, the witch is watching her, smiling.

The witch’s eyes are very green, and pin her like knives.

“I really must thank you, Lavinia. You’ve been such a help. But you won’t mind a change in plans, will you?” she says, the question relentlessly rhetorical.

(Lavinia still wonders about Nasya. What things would have been like, if she could have gone with her. Would things have been different, or would she be a pawn in a different set of schemes?)

But at least someone is listening. Someone _cares_ about the truths she has uncovered. Someone who very much does not want to be discovered.  


“My nephew died,” the witch continues, as if talking about the weather. “Just a little while ago.”

“Oh,” Lavinia says, before she can think better of it. “I’m sorry.” The mention of family has jarred her out of any sense of caution, even with her thoughts scrambling for how long a while could possibly mean in such a place, what else she might possibly glean from such a short statement. She still has to say _something_. 

“How kind of you.” There is something heavy and ill-fitting about the words as she says them, but the smile remains. “It wasn’t entirely unexpected,” she adds, almost confiding. “He was a clever child, but precocious. He took risks. It made him much like his father, though they would both have hated to hear it. You know how family is.”

Lavinia bites her lip, thinking of her mother, voice shaking through each syllable of her names when they argued. “I _am_ sorry about your nephew, but I don’t see what this has to do with me –”

“We had made a great deal of plans, and it is up to me now to carry them through,” the witch continues, serenely ignoring her input, and her eyes glitter with what has to be laughter. “And it has occurred to me that you’ve been rather neglected here, after everything you’ve brought to my doorstep. You have been wasted for far too long, haven’t you? By your City, of course, and the Reef after that.”

Lavinia swallows, and sets her cup down. The flavour of home has encountered a large lump in her throat, and cannot seem to get past.

“I do,” says the witch, pensive, “hate to see waste.”

“I’ve told you so much,” she says, shying away from her certainty of how terrible a choice – was it a choice, really? – it was to do so. “I’ve told you everything I know. What _more_ could you want with me?”

Maybe it’s still the thought of her mother, and the City, and an entire beautiful, ransacked planet she’ll never see again, that makes Lavinia fling the teacup right at her captor’s face.

The tea spills in a beautiful, gleaming arc. The cup catches on nothing as the air stutters, and she tastes salt and seawater for an instant – and then the world resumes.

They are sitting at the table. The wind howls and makes the branches of the trees outside tap at the windows. The fire crackles. The teacups sit, now empty.

“Feeling better, dear?” the witch asks dryly.

Her shoulders hunch. “No.”

“But you had to try it, anyways, didn’t you? Even though you’ve already learned the rules for this space.” She is still speaking more slowly, thoughtfully, and Lavinia finds she hates it. The conversational pleasantries and veiled condescension are... well, not _fine_ , but they are a game Lavinia has a chance at keeping up with.

This is the witch slowly baring the blade of her intellect, and it is terrible – because of how deliberately she does it, because Lavinia is afraid and yet at the same time, she’s blundering towards trying to understand –

“You too are bound by your nature, after all.” The witch’s eyes are impossibly bright now, almost burning. She is reminded of the auroras over areas blasted by radiation, their very brilliance an implicit warning. “So our cycles continue onward.” She leans forward, and Lavinia scoots back without meaning to.

“If I had left you with the Nine, yours would have ground you to dust by now.”

“And captivity is so much better,” she says, desperately bold. If the witch needs her for something else, she’s scarcely going to get rid of her now.

The witch beams, and Lavinia knows she has somehow set her foot right back into another trap. “In this case, you’ll find it is.

“Tell me, Lavinia. How would you like to go home?”

All her fleeting bravado drains away. “ _Home?_ You can’t mean – I’m an exile. The City cast me out. I can’t go back.” It’s the first thing that comes to mind, even if this whole unfortunate journey started to fix that, to prove something so true and important the City would have to allow her to return....

“Oh,” the witch says. “I think your knowledge is exactly what they need right now. Your City will be grateful enough to welcome you back with open arms.”

Questions boil up with more than a tinge of urgency, and Lavinia chokes them down. Either the witch won’t answer them, or she _will_ , and those answers will lead her further astray. She has to stay focused, clear-headed. Never her strong suit when cornered, but she rather thinks all the perilous situations have toughened her nerves just a little since she had crept into the Cryptarch’s vault. Would she have stared down those Guardians, maybe –

(Rambling again, Lavinia. _Focus._ )

It’s rather like phrasing the right question to get her master’s approval – not a task she was very good at to begin with – but the stakes are so much higher. Her pulse pounds in her ears. “Just sending me back for my own sake would be another waste, wouldn’t it?”

The witch smiles at her like the most terrifying grandmother she’s never had. “It just so happens that I am in need of an envoy to the City, since my last one was so rudely killed –”

“ _Killed?_ ”

“Do keep up, Lavinia,” she says impatiently, and several pieces fall together in quick succession. Her nephew. Of course. “You’ll have a far more merciful reception than he did. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Lavinia almost wishes she had the simulated tea back just so she could busy herself while thinking very, very fast. Why would an enemy of the City – and she refers to the City and the Reef with such airy distance, like they are such _small_ things – want to speak to it? There’s no question that going to the City on her behalf would be a bad idea. No question that, just as before, she has little choice.

So much for luck.

“And what would I be saying?” Her voice doesn’t quite waver. The witch is offering her what they both want. “As your envoy.”

“All sorts of things. Some of them may even be true.” The witch’s eyes narrow, and Lavinia feels the threat in her drifting attention.

“I’ll do it,” she says quickly, before she can think long enough to regret it. She can hear her master and Rahool and Ikora Rey all despairing of her in the back of her mind. So quick to make choices, so reckless. “Take me back.”

“First,” the witch says. “You must speak my name.”

She reels. “What? But – but you haven’t told me your name. I don’t know it.”

The look she gets is pitiable and mocking, a teacher exasperated by a favourite student. “Surely that shouldn’t be a problem for you. I’ve given you more than enough to find it.”

With growing dread, Lavinia realizes that this is true. How many enemies of humanity have notable relatives? The only ones she can think of are Oryx and his sons, all dead. But Oryx had sisters somewhere out beyond the solar system, circling with their armies and fleets out in deep space....

“Savathûn,” she whispers. “You’re Savathûn.”

“The pact is made,” Savathûn says, and her smile is decidedly sharp-toothed. “Let’s get you to where you belong.”

The warm and pleasant cage of a room shreds itself apart, and Lavinia tastes salt for the last time.


End file.
